US military continues its Christian Evangelical Crusade under the guise of the War on Terror and spreading democracy .
Meanwhile those military personnel who reject the Conservative Evangelical Fundamentalist Christian message are harassed by their fellow Evangelical soldiers and by the Evangelical Chaplains and officers who believe it to be their highest duty to convert these Non-Believers.
And as one chaplain points out in the video below because he is in the US military he is being paid while he is proselytizing .
The Chaplains and /or Officers who preach to the soldiers at Evangelical Services on US military bases tell the soldiers that it is thanks to the US Military and the US government that they have a great opportunity to spread the good word of Jesus to the heathen nations of the world while being paid a salary and having the US military and US government pay for their travel expenses . For the Evangelical leaders this is in essence a cheap way to carry out the Great Commission that is to preach the gospel to all the nations.
This is important for the Evangelicals because according to their reading of the Bible the Kingdom of God cannot be established on Earth for a thousand years ( or that the countdown to the Last Days cannot begin and so forth ) until the Gospel is offered to all the nations and peoples of the world.
Others officers and chaplains willingly state in this film clip that soldiers during basic training are at their most vulnerable due to sleep-deprivation, extremes of heat and cold , going without food for a day or more while they are being screamed at by the officers and are punished for any and all minor infractions of the rules etc.
During basic training the soldiers have little or no contact with friends and family so their world is upended as they are thrown into barracks life.
This form of torture lite is seen by evangelicals not as a time to raise the soldiers spirits , to encourage them to keep going but rather to abuse their position as a chaplain or even as a drill sergeant or other officers or their fellow grunts to bring these young men and women when they are physically and mentally worn down to bring them into the Christian Evangelical fold for becoming Born Again is the only way that they will be able to survive this overtly brutal training and to survive their tour of duty.
So no matter how President Obama might characterize the role of the American War machine it is now a fact that the military has been to a great extent by stealth taken over and controlled by the Christian Evangelicals who are more interested in pushing their Christian Nationalist agenda and converting as many soldiers as they can. They are not concerned that the appearance of the US War Machine as a force for Jesus and Christianity may create even more enemies of the USA.
The proselytizing by US soldiers to the citizens of a country which the US has invaded such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan etc. where the majority are not Christian but in fact are Muslims the US military undermines its supposed goal of winning hearts and minds.
Instead the people of Islamic countries or other nations which are not Christian come to see the US War Machine as a Crusading Christian Army which has no respect for the religious beliefs and the cultures of these nations.
Just think about how people in the Western nation would feel if the armies of a foreign nation invaded and put down the culture and religion or lack thereof characterizing as evil as minions of Satan who need to convert or die the people of America or the people of other Western nations .
The depiction of all those inside the military and those civilians they encounter in foreign lands who have not been brought to Christ as lost souls who if they refuse the message of Conservative fundamentalist Evangelical Christianity are damned to Hell and are in this life enemies of God and Jesus and therefore enemies of Christian America. America is according to most Evangelical Christians after all God's Chosen nation whose role is to bring Christ to the world in preparation of the End of Days / and /or the Reign of Christ or the reign of the True Church til Jesus returns.
Conservative Evangelical Christians have allies in other Christian Churches and other religious groups such as The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Mormon Church or LDS) and others . Mormon Church teaches that America was chosen as the promised land where Jesus would first appear on His Second Coming which the LDS founder Joseph Smith claims Jesus had told the native Americans some 2000 years ago when Jesus visited America shortly after being raised from the dead after his crucifixion. Joseph Smith and the Mormon Church claim that the so-called Native Americans are actually part of the Lost Tribes of Israel who migrated to America a few centuries prior to the birth of Jesus.
U.S. Military being used as Government-Paid Missionaries
Published on 15 Jun 2012 by MikeyMRFF
A collection of clips showing military chaplains and some of the many fundamentalist parachurch ministries that operate freely within the military clearly stating what their real mission is. Video also shows the mission of these chaplains and parachurch ministries being put into practice in Afghanistan.
Help Build the Wall separating Church and State in the U.S. Military! http://www.helpbuildthewall.org
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And here's a video of Mikey Weinstein of Military Religious Freedom taking on revisionist Historian David Barton .
David Barton is self-righteous greedy, hate-mongering Glenn Beck and Fox News' the go-to-guy on issues concerning the Wall of Separation between Church and State.
Unfortunately for the Mormons is that Beck is one of them. Beck is surely not good for the public image of the Mormon Church but then again nor is Romney who is a wealthy out of touch with average Americans. To Romney the poor are those who are only worth a couple of million.
Mikey Weinstein Responds to David Barton calling him "Secretary of the Air Force"
The Bible now being given to US military personnel is an updated Evangelical Fundamentalist version of the King James version and comes with a variety of study materials which focus on the Fundamentalist literal reading of the Bible. According to this version of the Bible the Christian God and his proselytizing son Jesus insist that all "true Christians" are called upon to spread the Evangelical Fundamentalist Christian message to whomever they can. Those in the military who have accepted this variation on Evangelical Fundamentalist Christianity have an obligation and duty to God to proselytize among their fellow soldiers and to civilians in the USA or in any nation in which these US military personnel are stationed
God or Jesus' call to proselytize is part of the Great Commission does not just include those who are not Christians ie Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Sikhs, Daoists, Hindus and so forth but also to those military personnel and civilians they encounter who call themselves Christians but who according to Evangelical Christians belong to apostate and even heretical supposedly Christian Churches and sects which preach a "False Gospel".
The God of these Militant Evangelical Fundamentalist Christian Nationalists is a God of wrath and vengeance who condemns to Hell Fire for eternity all those who reject the Gospel as defined by these Christian Evangelical Fundamentalists .
Their God is a jealous God who is intolerant of all other relious belief systems.
So God's supposedly chosen ones who are Evangelical Followers see all those who reject "Christ" and The Born Again theology as being the enemies of God and Christ and by rejecting this peculianr form of Christianity are to be considered the allies and or minions of the Anti-Christ /the Devil or Satan and have therefore forfeited their eternal souls and their physical existence ie death to the Infidels and heretics.
A military Bible paints war as religious devotion. What could go wrong? by Kelley B. Vlahos at Antiwar.com via Roger Hollander at wordpress.com, June 26, 2012
Well, the Holman Bible. To be more exact, a version of the Bible that, for reasons still undetermined, was authorized with the trademarked official insignia of the U.S. Armed Forces emblazoned on the front cover. There is The Soldier’s Bible with the Army’s seal, The Marine’s Bible with the Marine Corps seal, The Sailor’s Bible and The Airman’s Bible, both with their respective insignia. The books have been sold for nearly six years throughout Christian bookstores, commissaries and PXs on U.S. military installations — and are still available on Christianbook.com, Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble.
It’s not the King James Version that the Gideons leave behind in hotel rooms drawers. The Holman Bible was commissioned and published by LifeWay Christian Resources, a subsidiary of the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest Baptist denomination in the world, in 2003.
In a 1999 press release announcing the edition’s progress, Broadman & Holman Publishers called the new version “a fresh, precise translation of the Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek of the Old and New Testaments.” LifeWay President James T. Draper Jr. weighed in, saying there was a “serious need for a 21st-century Bible translation in American English that combines accuracy and readability,” adding, “the Holman Christian Standard Bible is an accurate, literal rendering with a smoothness and readability that invites memorization, reading aloud and dedicated study.”
The Holman Bible, or HCSB, has been popular with evangelicals for its references and study tools. Someone convinced each branch of the service they’d be perfect for the military, too. So the HCSB became the “official” Bible of the Army, Air Force, Navy and Marines in 2004, complete with reader-friendly text and custom “designed to meet the specific needs of those who serve in the most difficult of situations,” according to the publishers.
In other words, aside from the text, the books are filled with “devotionals” and “inspirational essays” tailored to each branch of service. I was unable to get my hands on a copy by press time, but Amazon’s “peek” inside the book and several positive reader reviews confirm some of the contents, revealing what could only be described as a guileless conflation of both Christian and American military iconography. War and service as religious devotion.
In addition to the Pledge of Allegiance and the first and fourth verses of the Star Spangled Banner, there are excerpts from one of George W. Bush inaugural addresses and the Republican president’s remarks at a National Prayer Breakfast. Gen. George S. Patton’s famous Christmas prayer card from the field of battle 1944 is also included, as is “George Washington’s Prayer,” which has been widely circulated (and debunked) as proof of America’s Christian paternity.
These Bibles also feature “testimonials and encouragement from the Officers’ Christian Fellowship,” which has approximately 15,000 members across the military and whose primary purpose is “to glorify God by uniting Christian officers for biblical fellowship and outreach, equipping and encouraging them to minister effectively in the military society.” In other words they proselytize within the officer corps as part of an evangelical “parachurch” within the military.
A largely unfettered one, apparently, as one watches Pentagon officers commenting freely on camera — and in uniform — for this Bush-era promotional video for Christian Embassy, another federal government-wide “fellowship” with similar missionary goals.
One officer, Air Force Maj. Gen. Jack Catton, who said he worked on the Joint Staff at the Pentagon, described himself as “an old fashioned American and my first priority is my faith in God.” Pointing to his meeting with other officers under the auspices of Christian Embassy, he said, “I think it’s a huge impact because you have many men and women who are seeking God’s counsel and wisdom as we advise the Secretary of Defense.”
Then U.S. Brigadier Gen. Bob Caslan (currently promoted to lieutenant general as the commanding general at the U.S. Army’s prestigious Combined Arms Center at Ft. Leavenworth, Kan.) went so far as to say he sees the “flag officer fellowship groups … hold me accountable.”
“We are the aroma of Jesus Christ,” he added.
Something smells, all right, said Weinstein, who heads the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF). The roles of the officers in the video were later deemed improperafter MRFF demanded an investigation in 2007. As for the Bibles, Weinstein said he received some 2,000 complaints about them from service members over the last year. Weinstein, a former Air Force Judge Advocate (JAG) whose 2005 charges against the Air Force Academy in Colorado led to an investigation that officially found religious “insensitivity” against non- fundamentalists there, has gone on to expose a much wider climate of “top-down, invasive evangelicalism” at the institution and throughout the military as a whole.
“We’re fighting a Fundamentalist-Christian-Parachurch-Military-Corporate-Proselytizing-Complex,” Weinstein said told Antiwar.com last week, “and we have been fighting this for some time.” MRFF just posted a video montage, which could easily be called the military evangelicals’ greatest hits, here.
He said aside from “prostituting” the military insignia, the military’s endorsement of the Bibles violated federal separation of church and state, and continue to sanction an insidious culture of radical evangelicalism and discrimination throughout the services (as a Jew, Weinstein said he felt the sting of prejudice when he attended the Air Force academy in the late 1970s; his sons had it even worse, he claims, prompting his first formal complaint seven years ago).
Since then, “(MRFF) has had 28,000 clients and a hundred more each month,” said Weinstein, rejecting claims by his critics that they are all atheist. He insists that 96 percent of his clients are Christians (Catholic and Mainline Protestant) and that his is not a religious crusade. On the other hand, some 33 percent of chaplains are now evangelical Christians (Weinstein’s MRFF places that number at 84 percent), while only 3 percent of service members describe themselves as such.
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